Endgame: Classified IGI report on SARS — new investigation into rogue SSA agents promised

“Hope is the only good god remaining among mankind;
the others have left and gone to Olympus.
Trust, a mighty god has gone, Restraint has gone from men,
and the Graces, my friend, have abandoned the earth.
Men’s judicial oaths are no longer to be trusted, nor does anyone
revere the immortal gods; the race of pious men has perished and
men no longer recognise the rules of conduct or acts of piety.”

— (6th century BC Greek poet, Theognis of Megara)

To those unfamiliar with the Greek myth of Pandora and her little box, a short synopsis of the significance of the enduring cautionary tale is called for.

Back then, Prometheus, a Titan, was known as a trickster. We know the sort, they still live among us. Commander in Chief and No 1 at the time was Zeus, god of all, who had kept hidden the secret of fire from the mere mortals.

One day, the celestial NEC met and decided to have a braai. Prometheus was invited, but he arrived with an agenda: to steal fire and return it to humankind. So Prome (as they used to call him) conned No 1, and instead of offering a prime cut, disguised some fat and bones as Woolies top grade.

Pandora was a sort of Kim Kardashian of the times and took the fancy of Prometheus’s brother Epimetheus, who married her. So smitten was Epimetheus he forgot warnings that Zeus was so pissed off with his brother that he would try to take revenge.

Pandora, who probably harboured secret aspirations of becoming an investigative journalist (or a CI or State Security Agent) opened the box against the express instructions of No 1.

And out flew all the evils of the world — Telkom, slow WiFi, shopping malls, sickness, death, turmoil, politicians, corruption, medical aids and the Department of Home Affairs.

The only thing that remained in Pandora’s box was hope, hence Theognis of Megara’s musings on that most essential of human emotions.

These are over and above the jinns that have been uncorked at the Zondo Commission of Inquiry.

Joining the myriad dots that add up to the industrial-scale capture of the state and many of its institutions during the Zuma years, it is evident that this IGI report forms the bedrock of later witch-hunts of officials at SARS and of current Minister of Public Enterprises, Pravin Gordhan.

The genesis of the now-discredited “rogue unit” narrative can be traced back at least to this report which the EFF and the Public Protector have relied on in various court actions.

The IGI report was attached to EFF responding affidavits in an Equality Court matter brought by Gordhan in two hate speech matters against EFF leaders Julius Malema and Floyd Shivambu.

This matter relates to Malema’s comments outside the Zondo Commission in November 2018 that Gordhan is “a dog of white monopoly capital” and that EFF members should prepare for “war” with Gordhan.

While the IGI report clearly has no bearing on the hate speech charges, the EFF sought this avenue to make the classified IGI report public and to quote selectively from its findings.

When Gordhan applied to have it struck from the record, Equality Court judge Roland Sutherland on 30 September ruled that it remain part of the record.

So there it is.

The IGI report also mysteriously found its way to Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s office, who included it in her investigation into SARS and Gordhan.

In her final report, Mkhwebane found that the SARS high-risk investigations unit had been established “in violation of South African intelligence prescripts”. She also found that the unit had spied illegally and specifically recommended that the findings of the IGI report be implemented — that is, charge Gordhan.

While Radebe had, in her conclusion, relied on the testimony of a long list of now discredited and duplicitous SSA officials, she appears to have deliberately ignored input by SARS officials who had warned of an attack on SARS by rogue SSA operatives.

SARS, of course, was investigating the tax matters of a variety of politicians, connected businesspeople as well as the multi-billion-rand tobacco industry.

The revelation that Dintwe is revisiting the investigation is contained in a more-than-300-page affidavit with attachments, filed by former SARS deputy commissioner Ivan Pillay and supported by Van Loggerenberg.

Pillay and Van Loggerenberg are supporting Minister of State Security Ayanda Dlodlo’s interlocutory application to the Pretoria High Court where she seeks to interdict the dissemination of the 2014 IGI report.

Mkhwebane, illegally in possession of the report, has opposed Dlodlo's application, saying the IGI report was “a central part” of her ongoing investigations and findings.

In July 2019 Pretoria High Court Judge Sulet Potterill suspended Mkhwebane’s remedial action against Gordhan pending a review of the public protector’s report. A month later, in August 2019, Mkhwebane withdrew her Constitutional Court application for leave to appeal against that ruling.

Potterill has been removed from hearing the matter as she is the subject of a complaint lodged by Mkhwebane to the Judicial Services Commission for her disparaging findings against the public protector in suspending her remedial action.

Included in the list of those the current Inspector General of Intelligence has committed to investigate are former Sunday Times investigative journalists Piet Rampedi and Mzilikazi wa Afrika, as well as SSA operatives who were named as key instigators in the campaign to discredit SARS.

These include former SSA Special Operations Unit head Thulani Dlomo, triple agent and SSA spy, Pretoria lawyer Belinda Walter, SARS SSA spy Mandisa Mokwena as well as members of the Tobacco Task Team, Chris Burger, Ferdi Fryer and Casper Jonker and others.

Van Loggerenberg, in his affidavit in support of Dlodlo, said it was “evident” that Radebe had, at the time, “disregarded complaints, evidence and facts provided by me during 2014 which were of a material nature to such alleged ‘findings’.”

He said it was also apparent that the 34 complaints, with a list of 64 “persons of interest”, had been ignored by Radebe.

“It is most significant, based on Mr Malema’s allegations of what the report contains and the media reports, that the very persons and entities that I implicated at the IGI, appear to have been uncritically relied upon.”

Van Loggerenberg said his complaints to Radebe “pointed directly to instances of attempts to undermine SARS, its officials and investigations, and various other matters I believe directly related to State Capture.”

He said he had “no doubt that what should have been exposed during the Inspector General of Intelligence process in 2014, but which was clearly ignored, will completely alter and contradict all of the purported ‘findings’ in their totality.”

The court papers reveal a few other surprising nuggets, notably that Walter, who acted as an attorney for Malema’s benefactor, Adriano Mazzotti’s and Kyle Phillips’s tobacco company, Carnilinx, had in fact been party to registering the trademark of the EFF’s logo in 2014. Emails from Walter to this effect have been attached to the affidavit.

Malema, in his answering affidavit to Dlodlo’s application, had described Walter, who lodged the original complaint about SARS, as “a member of the public and a lawyer for tobacco companies”.

“Mr Malema has not taken the court into his confidence and set out the facts known to him regarding Ms Walter. In fact, they go back a long way,” said Van Loggerenberg.

“Mr Malema’s attorney, Mr Tumi Mokwena, informed me, when he sought to consult with me between March 2015 and May 2015, that he and his client had been consulting with Walter with respect to a dispute that Mr Malema had with SARS. I reported this to SARS and the SSA at the time.”

He added, “it is public knowledge that Carnilinx Tobacco Company is a benefactor of both Mr Malema and the EFF. Mr Malema is friendly with Mr Mazzotti and he has received a R1-million loan from another of its directors, Mr Kyle Philips.”

It was also widely known, said Van Loggerenberg, that Walter was the attorney for Carnilinx “while spying on Carnilinx, its directors and their private lives for a multi-agency Tobacco Task Team [which consisted of Jonker, Burger, Schlenther, Niemann and former SARS operative Mike Peega] along with British American Tobacco and an entire spy network” operated by its private security division Forensic Security Services.

“It is inconceivable that Mr Malema has forgotten that it is in fact Ms Walter who unlawfully and illegally spied on his benefactors and that this led to a major fallout between me and this multi-agency Tobacco Task Team and Ms Walter.”

Van Loggerenberg also revealed that Malema, through Mokwena, sought to engage his [Van Loggerenberg’s] services after he resigned from SARS in 2014.

The former SARS executive said that Mokwena, Malema’s attorney, had contacted him in March 2015 concerning Malema’s ongoing dispute with SARS.

Mokwena and Van Loggerenberg had met three times at Mokwena’s insistence, but Malema’s attorney had not been willing to “accept my normal business practice of providing invoices for services rendered”.

Van Loggerenberg had formally reported Mokwena’s approach to him to SARS and the SSA.

The two men had also met, said Van Loggerenberg, in 2010 after Peega, later arrested for poaching, had handed a “dossier” to Malema alleging that SARS was targeting politically exposed persons and was operating a “rogue” covert unit. At that meeting, said Van Loggerenberg, he had taken Malema through each of Peega’s allegations.

The IGI report is our little malevolent Pandora’s box. It has never been closely scrutinised or tested in any court. Reading it, it is clear Radebe placed an inordinate amount of importance on the testimony of the SSA operatives and expended very little attention on other serious allegations and evidence that the state was under attack — from the inside.

While hope still lies trapped in this particular Pandora’s box, most of the malevolent spirits are out and about.

Lancing the boil that is the “rogue unit” saga will inevitably lead to some sort of endgame. It has featured at the centre of South Africa’s political narrative for more than six years, used as a blunt instrument in relay, to beat those who have stood up to State Capture. Its days now are surely numbered. DM